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On Lending to Russia

Updated Feb. 2, 2001 12:04 a.m. ET

By Scott Talcott, a former principal banker at the EBRD in London.

F or a short time after the August 1998 ruble devaluation and debt default, it looked as if the West was prepared to slam the door on the deceptive techniques of the Russian political and commercial oligarchs. Western politicians and political analysts began to realize that the Russian oligarchy had essentially detached itself from the rest of the country, and that the lending policies of Western banks and investors were contributing only to the offshore...